Wertheimer, who can still drive but relies on a walker because she has five broken vertebrae, refuses to let her discomfort stand in the way of attending the events.

“It makes a difference if you touch somebody. It's more alive,” she said.

Deborah Hertz, a professor in the Judaic studies program at the University of California San Diego, helped establish the campus' Holocaust Living History Workshop. She agrees with Wertheimer.

People will not forget the Holocaust when the last survivor is gone, she said, but hearing one speak “just takes you one level further in your historical empathy, something that's hard to do with books.”

The definition of a survivor is open to debate. Some place more weight on those who were held in camps. Others contend the group includes anyone who was persecuted or forced into hiding during Hitler's reign, from 1933 to 1945. Before Hitler took power, about 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe; after the war, only about a third remained.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum relies on numbers provided by the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims. In 2003, the group estimated that 688,000 survivors were alive.

About 15 percent, nearly 110,000, live in the United States.

Schindler, who lives in San Diego's Del Cerro neighborhood, is among the youngest members, but she's not well. She has battled lymphoma since 2004.

“At our age, a lot of us are hanging by a string,” she said.

Schindler, born in the former Czechoslovakia, was harassed throughout the war but didn't end up in Auschwitz until 1944. A day after she arrived, she ran into her father, an Orthodox Jew.

She didn't recognize him without his beard, hat and dark suit. He urged her to cling to life, so she could tell her story.

It was the last time she saw him.

Schindler offers the memory without tears or discernible emotion. She's done it many times. It's the same when she pulls up her left sleeve to reveal her tattoo from the camp. “It's just a part of me,” she shrugged.

Wertheimer's identification number also remains visible: A-2250.

Her tidy La Mesa apartment features a crest from Wiesbaden, Germany, where the Nazis took her parents, Arthur and Sophie, from their home. She keeps two binders stuffed with remnants of the Holocaust and current photos of the home, which Wiesbaden officials marked with inscriptions to honor her parents.

To make the stories of their experiences more permanent, many local survivors have participated in oral history or documentary projects. A group of Carlsbad High School students interviewed some, including Schindler, for a film, “We Must Remember.”

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg launched the most prominent of the preservation efforts 15 years ago, recording the stories of more than 52,000 survivors from around the world.

The archive is housed at the University of Southern California, but UCSD has access to the records and has made them available to students and the public.

Children of survivors also have pledged to share their family's stories.